Vehicle crashes, specifically car crashes, remain one of the leading causes of death for children. When driving with children on board, it is safer to restrain their bodies in the seats of vehicles so as to protect them from potential injuries that may be caused by a road accident. Seatbelts with a lap belt or a combination of a lap and shoulder belt are currently used with seats in moving vehicles such as cars, trains and airplanes, to secure and restrain each passenger in one of the seats. Although cars are generally equipped with seat belts providing considerable safety for passengers, these seat belts are designed for adult wearers of limited size and weight ranges. Seatbelts are designed for adults, and not for children, resulting in an improper fit when used with children.
The level of protection offered by these conventional seat belts may not be sufficient for children whose body sizes are generally smaller as compared with adults. With the current trend of decreasing vehicle ownership and increasing use of ridesharing services, there is a need for a child restraint that is highly portable and easy to use. Current commercially available child restraints for use in a moving vehicle are bulky, difficult to transport and install between vehicles, and frequently used incorrectly.
There is a need for a child restraint that is used with seatbelts that is sized based on a wearer's age and a wide range of the wearer's size and which furthermore secures the wearer to seats in moving vehicles. There is also a need for a child restraint that secures the wearer to seats in moving vehicles even if the provided seatbelt is not sized to fit the wearer by routing the vehicle belt behind the occupant to secure the harness to the vehicle. There is a further need for a child restraint that utilizes pre-existing seatbelts and that is modular and thus can be used with any of the varied designs of seatbelts in virtually all moving vehicles. There is still a further need for a child restraint that is a harness having two mechanisms that connects the harness to a wearer, so that after the first, more easily secured mechanism, is connected it maintains the position of the harness on the wearer until the second mechanism is connected. Finally, there is an additional need in the art to provide a child restraint that is structurally strong such that it is not prone to tears or rips if the child restraint is subject to forces resulting from an accident, impact or a sudden stop.